Hello friends,
I am experimenting with a Mork Borg solo play campaign. I am using an unholy combination of the core rules, Feretory, Solitary Defilement, and a deck of Tarot cards to guide my play. I'm also only leaning on the rules very loosely, and striving for a more narrative and journal-oriented game. Below you will find the first three days of my adventure, captured in two sittings. I hope you enjoy!
The Saga of Belum Grittr
Day 1
My name is Belum Grittr. That’s all I remember. My broken body judders nervously and rhythmically as the pain shoots through my body like lightning bolts toward a steel rod. I bear the scars of a great violence, though I know not what harmed me – if I did, I would surely destroy it. I would bring heaven and earth and the whole firmament down on any fool who would wrong me so. I know nothing of the world now, only this meagre and pallid forest where I awoke scant few days ago. The trees here speak to me and I to them. Sometimes they whisper soothing balms, and other times they spit venomous blasphemy. In these latter cases I scream back with black and foul tongue. I curse and I cuss and I rail against them until they are silent once more. I awake each morning to the bickering of crows, and though I spend my days walking the forest, I always return by evenfall to my den below a precariously placed boulder, where I sleep on a mat of living moss and lichen. I live a most luxurious life, I do.
On an unsuspecting and grey morn I begin my sortie through the woods. I lean on a long and sturdy staff for support. It bears esoteric and occult carvings upon its flesh, though I am unable to parse their meaning – no doubt some residue of my past life. At center it is wrapped and studded with a leather grip, and I appreciate this detail as I lean on the staff during my longer jaunts. On this particular day I find myself uncharacteristically lost, as since my arrival in these woods, I have grown quite familiar with their winding ways. My loss becomes a gain as I stumble into a strange sort of grotto. A shallow and foetid pool sits stagnant before a squat and ugly tree in the center of the clearing. The tree is near as wide as it is tall, like a cask or keg, though its body undulates this way and then that. From its obdurate torso sprout many thin and feeble branches, naked and bearing no leaves or fruit. As I stare it this ugly thing, I know it is the Queen of the Wood.
A wet squelching fills my ears before I realize that this is the voice of the thing before me. Without my consent, my body begins to kneel down in reverence. My cracked and aching limbs jolt with pain – the nerves in my knees protest and they spasm with all their might. Yet I obey and am knelt. “The time has come for you to leave this place”, comes the rasping voice of the tree, “but you will return”. I nod, sensing the wisdom in this statement without understanding the meaning of the words. “You will leave”, it begins again, “and you will return to me with a body, mutilated by those who loved it in life”. I bow my head at this command, and I begin to weep tears of joy, for this quest bestowed upon me is a thing of beauty, and I am prepared to bring beauty into the world. And I am alone. When my tears cease, I look around and find the clearing empty of queen or pool. I sit alone in the mud in a damp and dying wood.
I find myself on a muddy path winding downwards through the foggy and damp wood. The trees grow sparser with every passing minute and the ground that replaces them is barren and cracked. I notice that I am now garbed in armour. Rusty sleeves of chain trail down my body, and I cannot recall having dressed myself thus. I also carry a sack that jingles and tinkles and clunks as I bang it along down the road. No matter that I do not remember such things. They are mine now, and I am here.
Day 2
On the following morn, I rise. From my meagre camp in the hollow of a hill, I sit amidst fog as thick as a white sheep’s wool. The world is silent and damp, and there is no strong sense of time or place. I cannot see my own tracks in the mud, nor the trail that I was assured ran nearby. I am lost once more. But I am an excellent navigator, this I know, and so will not suffer this predicament for long. I find a dead squirrel in my sack of trinkets and flense it. I roast the body over a damp and sputtering cook fire, and then I throw the bones to the ground in a ritual of finding. All of the bones tell me that I am to head in the direction that can only be north, and that I will find the first stepping stone of my journey.
Somehow, the fog thickens, though I do not believe this is possible. It is a physical, tangible thing. I can feel it like a wall before me, and I press against it in defiance. Alas, I am confounded. I mark the trail with heavy stones, so I know the direction I am travelling, and set about making camp for the night. There will be no more progress this day.
Darkness falls around me as I sit still in the eerie silence. As the white wall of fog turns to black, I hear a soft sound that grows. Clomping. A donkey stands before me, illumined, its face deathly sallow and its fur matted and damp. Four… no, five silhouettes gather around the beast. Small things, no taller than a child, but their eyes are sharp and dangerous. I hear one of them sniffing the air like a dog. They are looking for something. The one in front uncovers a lantern and they are revealed as homunculi of one form or another. He offers to trade with me and begins pulling bits of broken trash from a burlap sack tied to the saddle of the donkey. I can see the rest of the creatures moving to surround me, as if a creature like me would not notice this subterfuge. I begin to laugh. At first it is a chuckle, but it descends into my belly and becomes a cackle, before hysteria takes hold and I am entirely lost in mirth. I regain my composure, and I can see that the homunculi have departed. The joke must have been lost on them. I sleep soundly.
Day 3
Today the fog has passed, but a great roaring thunder breaks and rolls across the world. No rain, mind you, but a sound to wake the hells. So, wake I do, and carry on. I retrieve my remaining squirrel from my sack, but it has spoiled and is spilling maggots among my things. I leave it by the roadside as an offering to the woods, but I must eat and so go forth to find sustenance. The woods heed my offering and present me with a rat. It is the size of a dog, and it scampers forth from some low scrub on muscular legs to sniff at the maggoty squirrel. It is distracted by the delicious rot, which gives me time to say a prayer and recite the magic words that are stuck inside of my skull. I press the advantage and spring from behind a tree, shrieking like a banshee and swinging my staff like a cudgel. my staff crunches into the side of the beast, which leaps backwards with a cry of its own before launching forward and sinking rows of razor teeth into my left leg. I have the creature right where I want it and swing down my staff with all my might, only to miss and dash my staff against a rock, splintering it into a thousand wooden shards. In my rage at the loss of my runic staff, I reach my hands down and throttle the rat, crushing its throat and shaking it violently until dead. I fall back into the mud, sweating and depleted. I take the rat and crush its skull against a rock for good measure. That was enough surprises for one morning.
After the bleeding in my leg stops and I consume the rat, I continue along the trail. I crest a low rise and am met with a magnificent view. A ruined tower surrounded by thatched hovels lay on the coast before an ash grey sea. The smells of trash piles, and of cook fires burning damp wood assail my senses. Civilization at last. I laugh hysterically as I shamble into this town and I enter a building marked as a drinking establishment – The Drowned Rat, as luck would have it. All eyes avert their gaze as though I am not present. All except for the barkeep who stares deep into my eyes. He smiles the grim smile of a predator and waves me to a seat at the bar. I order a bottle and tell him my saga and ask for three things. A bed, and directions to a blacksmith and an oracle. He obliges, for a hefty sum of coin. His name is Gotven, and he tells me I am always welcome at his bar – but I do not believe him. I think he would strangle me for a copper piece. I will need to protect myself tonight as I sleep.
I spend the afternoon meandering around the town following Gotven’s directions. I find a blind blacksmith named Torn who sells me a rusted sword, and an old widow named Gretr who sells me a hound. I name him Ratz and give him a kiss. He follows behind me loyally as I seek the oracle. I find the holy woman in a shrine made of shipwrecked fishing vessels, piled into a sort of spire. She sits cross-legged inside on the earthen floor in front of a small fire burning wet vegetation and offal and pluming black smoke into the air. Entirely enrobed in black, I can sense nothing of her being save for her low voice. I tell her I seek one mutilated by those who loved them. I offer her coins, and a page ripped from my book of psalms. She eats the page and throws the coins in the fire. We laugh together for a while, and then a hush descends, and she tells me to seek the Pelerines of the Oneiric Death to the south-east. I thank her deeply and then take Ratz with me to my rented room. When I enter the establishment Gotven sets eyes on my hound, and I can see that he will not trouble me this night. It is my turn to smile as I make my way to my room.
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